Chuang Xu,1,2 Zhicai Luo,1,3 Rong Sun,1 Hao Zhou1,2 and Yihao Wu1,2

1Institute of Geophysics, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, No. 1037 Luo Yu Road, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China. E-mail: zcluo@hust.edu.cn
2State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth’s Dynamics, Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 340 Xu Dong Avenue, Wuhan 430077, People’s Republic of China

3MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, No. 1037 Luo Yu Road, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China

Accepted 2018 March 16. Received 2018 February 28; in original form 2017 October 8

ABSTRACT

Determining density structure of the Tibetan Plateau is helpful in better understanding of tectonic structure and development. Seismic method, as traditional approach obtaining a large number of achievements of density structure in the Tibetan Plateau except in the centre and west, is primarily inhibited by the poor seismic station coverage. As the implementation of satellite gravity missions, gravity method is more competitive because of global homogeneous gravity coverage. In this paper, a novel wavelet-based gravity method with high computation efficiency and excellent local identification capability is developed to determine multilayer densities beneath the Tibetan Plateau. The inverted six-layer densities from 0 to 150 km depth can reveal rich tectonic structure and development of study area: (1) The densities present a clockwise pattern, nearly east-west high-low alternating pattern in the west and nearly south-north high-low alternating pattern in the east, which is almost perpendicular to surface movement direction relative to the stable Eurasia from the Global Positioning System velocity field; (2) Apparent fold structure approximately from 10 to 110 km depth can be inferred from the multilayer densities, the deformational direction of which is nearly south-north in the west and east-west in the east; (3) Possible channel flows approximately from 30 to 110 km depth can also be observed clearly during the multilayer densities. Moreover, the inverted multilayer densities are in agreement with previous studies, which verify the correctness and effectiveness of our method.